Talk about inspiration; these are all simply incredible. I used to obsess over tapes when I was a kid, always looking for the coolest packaging or interesting design. But never in all those years did I come across any as cool as these. Most of these look to be a little before my time and, of course, are of European origin. I always wonder what effect growing up around such interesting design might have had on me. All we had in the states was this crap, while German kids got to record Ege Bamyasi to little plastic boxes coated in design goodness. Maybe it’s for the best, I guess now I can appreciate things like this more. Jubru has posted these scans to a flickr gallery where you’ll find many more great examples.

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haha the cassettetape, the mp3 of my youth
picking the coolest brand, spending hours drawing the artwork for the mix
and just driving around listing to the mixtapes, that some how sounded cooler in the car than on the homesethttp://www.designboom.com/contemporary/cassettes.html

Scott, these are awesome. I’m starting to feel like cassettes are the new vinyl. I had such a huge tape collection, and thinking about tapes evokes the same sense of nostalgia as vinyl records. Several years back while living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I found, in a junk shop, several crates filled with discarded cassettes, a true gold mine. This just gave me the idea to scan some of the labels.

Anyway, here’s a 3D render I did as commemoration to my cassette tape youth.

I had those Memorex cassettes myself in the 80’s Scott. From a design standpoint, I always thought that the Memorex packaging had been influenced (albeit poorly executed) by the Memphis design movement. I thought the packaging was brilliant when I first saw it, then grew tired of it quickly.

“Other pieces of furniture and lights were made from industrial materials – printed glass, celluloids, fireflake finishes, neon tubes and zinc-plated sheet-metals – jazzed up with flamboyant colours and patterns, spangles and glitter. By glorying in the cheesiness of consumer culture, Memphis was “quoting from suburbia,” as Sottsass put it. “Memphis is not new, Memphis is everywhere.” Matteo Thun described Memphis as “a mental gymnasium”.

mpb says:

Those Memorex tapes sounded like crap, too. TDK was where it was at (if memory serves, the packaging was slightly better as well).

In the 80’s, KLOS down in Los Angeles used to play complete albums over the air on Sunday evenings, only breaking with commercials when a side (yes, a side!) ended. I can remember going with my dad on Saturday nights to get stacks of TDK tapes with which to record them. He built up quite a music collection that way. During the week I would listen to the tapes going to and from school on my Walkman.

those memorex tapes weren’t THAT bad. and the design on the memorex tapes were pretty cool in retrospect. anyhow, i personally believe that the lack of “whatever” (i.e.- design, availability, accessibility) helped in the creative levels of many departments of living and lifestyle “back in the day”.

on the other hand… i really do think it is a wonderful thing to consider if having those german tapes would have effected you.

That darn Flickr “spaceball” thing! I just took screen shots of very single one of them and ran a crop batch in Photoshop. I just HAD to archive them in my “inspiration vault”. I remember tapes like these from my own childhood, but it’s only now that I really appreciate their aesthetics.

Scott, I love your vintage issues posts, and so wow there is a great covers tape, hardly to find a good collection like that. And well like tape fan, I found some months ago this link about the tapes, at the bottom of the home page is categorized the gallery by brands// http://www.tapedeck.org/
Well, now Im going to get my walkman and play my tape just for ear some like that : ) // http://blog.iso50.com/2008/12/08/college-secret-diary/
hehe, have a great weekend.
Sorry the English, I’m spanish speaker.

I love the Philips one, that bring back a lot of memories. My parents used to have this spindles with self-recorded Philips cassettes. Beautiful design, really. Reminds me of an old Sony logo found on radios. I wanted to mention tapedeck.org but I see someone else beat me to it :) I’m glad we had plastic boxes though, where did you keep your cassettes? Or how did you keep them clean? I miss my old white Telefunken radio… it was crap, but it was my crap.

dario says:

These are from around the mid 70s (the Philips and Sony at least I’m sure of) My dad had tons of these. You never got to see the artwork besides when buying the tapes, tho, because you would filp the card over and write the tracks on the reverse side.
Then later on I turned to drawing covers for my tapes, playing with india ink pens, xerox machines and letraset dry transfer sheets… and I became a designer :) Talk about a trip down memory lane!